


With Bow Tie and Eyebrows

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humour, Monsters, Romance, School at Night, a bit of angst, multi-doctor story, some foreshadowing, some very minor gore, spoilers for doctor who series 7 to 9, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8054380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: During a stressful parent-teacher interview night at Coal Hill School, Clara Oswald finds herself wishing for the Doctor to swoop in and take her away. She sort of gets her wish. Problem is it's the wrong Doctor.





	1. The Parents

**Author's Note:**

> This multi-chapter story started out as a semi-crack humour piece, turned into something a bit more serious (and even a little scary) and also gave an interesting opportunity for characters to discuss the relationships established in Series 7 through 9 of the series. 
> 
> For Clara, this takes place roughly midway through Series 9. The placement for the Doctor will become evident as the story progresses.

Not for the first time that evening, Clara Oswald wished for a Dalek to come along and exterminate her. Anything to take her mind off what she faced now.

Ever since that morning, years ago now, when the Doctor turned up on her doorstep wearing a monk’s habit, the two of them had stared down danger for breakfast, survived countless perils for lunch, survived catastrophes that would make Bear Grylls run crying home to Mummy for supper … 

...but nothing terrified Clara as much as parent-teacher interview night at Coal Hill School.

And nothing was more frightening than a parent or two who had the wind at their sails as they tore a strip off Ms. Oswald because their little darling wasn’t getting the grades they were promised. The fact their little darling spent most of their time staring out the window, giggling with friends, or sneaking a peek at their mobiles instead of paying attention to the lesson, obviously meant no never mind to these folks. Clara tried to see potential in every student—and, most of the time, she was successful—but some students did need attitude readjustments, and more support at home. It was Clara’s job to say so.

“Young lady, we don’t feel teaching _Pride and Prejudice_ is appropriate for our son,” said one irate mother. “What can Robbie possibly learn from a bunch of hoity-toity women from centuries ago drinking tea? He’s going to be a doctor. You should be teaching him science.”

“Mrs. Johnson, Robert _is_ being taught science, in another class,” Clara said, trying to keep the exasperation—and swear words—out of her voice. “English enhances students’ ability to express themselves creatively and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Literature broadens the mind because it doesn’t always offer easy answers. There’s no fundamental difference between a student today trying to get their head around Shakespeare and an adult deciphering a medical journal.”

“Then why can’t you at least get them to read something from this generation? _Harry Potter_ , maybe?”

And so it went. To be fair, not every parent was a horror. Some were very nice—and not just the ones whose little darlings legitimately _did_ deserve the A they got. There were even a few who felt their child deserved a close-to-fail grade in English and wanted to know how they could help their child do better. Ironically, Clara felt more exhausted after those encounters because she knew her advice _would_ be making a difference and she didn’t want to screw it up.

There were a few occasions where Clara’s other life, as it were, created some awkward moments. One particularly astute parent made Clara choke on her water when she asked her how she could have been spotted in Bristol the same day she was supposed to be giving a final at Coal Hill in London. (That was the time Clara and Rigsy had squared off against the Boneless in the tunnels under Bristol, with Clara doing her best Doctor impersonation while he was … indisposed.) Another, out of the blue, asked why she looked so much like that actress, Jenna-something, from _Emmerdale Farm_. 

“I get that a lot,” Clara said, with a sigh. She did, actually, get that a lot, especially since that same actress had started appearing in some popular sci-fi show all the kids liked.

Midway through the evening, the head called for a break to allow the teachers to freshen up, have a coffee ( _and maybe run away screaming into the night_ , Clara silently added). Smiling at the next group of parents who looked like they were ready to spit lead her way, Clara exited the auditorium and headed down the corridor to a quiet corner.

Even though she felt confident in her skills, and knew her job at Coal Hill as quite safe (the fact she’d recently discovered the chairman of the board was one of the Doctor’s very first companions didn’t hurt in that regard and probably explained why she still had a paycheque after taking off for Spain—not to mention medieval England—in the middle of a lecture on Jane Austen a few months earlier), parent-teacher night was like a job-performance review: you trundle along at your work, quite happy and thinking you’re doing well, and then the review comes along and you’re told how badly you’re actually doing and how everyone secretly hates you.

Clara wished she had a real friend at Coal Hill. Oh, she had colleagues, and people who she went for coffee with. And she knew both Mr. Dunlop and Adrian harboured crushes for her. But there was no Danny Pink for her to turn to anymore. There was just one man who could rescue her from her torment, and he’d turned in his caretaker uniform some time before, after saving the school (and the world) from a deadly robot called the Skovox Blitzer.

“Doctor, please take me away from all of this,” Clara whispered, as if it was a prayer. But she knew it was a lost cause. It was a Monday, for one thing, and they’d long ago agreed that they’d still get together on Wednesday for their adventures. Of course, Wednesday, on occasion, could last for a _long, long_ time from her perspective if there were … complications. (Clara was no longer able to actually gauge her true age after one adventure that saw her frozen in stasis for a hundred years. At least, her _body_ was frozen for a hundred years. After the Doctor had rescued her and thawed her out, he’d taken her home, returning her a mere twenty minutes after she’d left. You try finishing exam marking after _that_ experience, knowing you technically needed to add a hundred candles to your next birthday cake. And then, of course, the Doctor just _had_ to raise the ante by freezing himself for a hundred and _fifty_ years during the thing with the Fisher King.) 

More than once, she’d considered asking the Doctor to take her away forever. Earth didn’t really feel like home anymore. The TARDIS … it felt like home. _He_ felt like home. She’d actually told him so, but the one time she had asked to, for all intents and purposes, move in with him, he’d insisted that they were better off sticking to the arrangement they’d enjoyed for years. He’d told her that he’d seen the impact of cutting ties with home on some of his other companions and, in his words, it didn’t end well for some of them. 

Still, that didn’t mean she gave up hope. Maybe one day he’d drop his defences and realize what she was really asking for.

Clara took a deep breath. She hated Mondays, and she hated them even more because the Doctor wasn’t there. And he wasn’t going to bail her out of this one.

But then, she saw a flashing light in the window of the supply room from where she and the Doctor had launched so many adventures together. The telltale wheezing, groaning sound—which, to Clara’s ears, was the softest, sweetest symphony ever composed—was muffled by the thick oak door; anyone hearing it would just dismiss it as the building’s antiquated furnace acting up again, and fortunately there were few people in this part of the school at this time of night, anyway.

Smiling broadly, and with her heart pounding, if a little concerned at the fact the Doctor was making an off-schedule arrival, which usually meant something big was going down, she raced down the hall and slipped through the doorway. 

The tall blue box filled the back of the supply room and the doorway to adventure (or, in this case, escape) beckoned. She wasn’t planning to abandon her duties as a teacher, you understand, but, if the Doctor could just take her away for a few hours, days, months, years, that’s all she’d need to recharge her batteries to be able to face the rest of the night. Hell, if she turned up with a head full of grey hair, maybe the remaining parents would give her a bit more respect. Smiling broadly, Clara pushed at the TARDIS’ door and was surprised to find it locked.

That’s odd, she thought—the Doctor usually leaves the door unlocked when he parks here.

Shrugging, Clara held up her hand and snapped her fingers. Still nothing. Oh, you’re going to be like _that_ are you? Clara had long ago been granted the ability to open the TARDIS by snapping her fingers—the Doctor had explained that it was a gift from the ship in gratitude for having thrown herself into his timestream and saving his lives countless times. Clara felt hurt; what had she done to lose the privilege? Or had the TARDIS been hijacked? Again?

Frowning, she reached into her blouse and pulled out the simple string she always wore around her neck that was connected to what was, for all intents and purposes, a standard Yale lock key. “The key to his heart…” Clara said to herself as she unlocked the door and went inside.

It took a moment to notice something wasn’t right with the TARDIS. No, actually it looked fine, just … older. As in the interior of the ship was back to the way it was when Clara first met the Doctor; it was bluer, more stark and cooler in appearance than she had become accustomed to. And the bookcases with their wonderful selection of volumes were gone, along with the Doctor’s blackboards. Even the cute Beethoven bust she occasionally caught the Doctor talking to was nowhere to be found.

“You’ve been redecorating,” she said aloud. “I really don’t like it this time. Where are all the books? And what have I done to upset the TARDIS? She wouldn’t open for me properly.”

There was no answer.

“Hello?” she asked. “Anybody home?”

She heard clomping footsteps coming from down one of the corridors that led off into the bowels of the TARDIS. The footsteps came from a pair of feet attached to black-trousered legs that were attached to a torso that was completely obscured by various bits of metal, pipes, and, of all things, a stainless-steel kitchen sink.

The legs started up the steps to the central platform where the control console sat, but their owner clearly had forgotten how many steps there were as he made to climb one last nonexistent step and started to fall over. His reflexes took over to catch himself and the pipes, metal, and kitchen sink landed with a crash on the deck.

Clara quickly bent down to pick up some of the debris. “Well, that was silly,” she said. “I could have helped you carry this stuff if you’d waited a minute.” She hoisted the surprisingly heavy sink up and held it in front of her as she turned…

… and saw a ghost.

“Clara, what are you doing here?” said the Doctor, his mop of unruly dark hair curling above a young-old face anointed with a truly impressive chin (to make up for a rather delicate set of eyebrows). Under the chin rested a dull-red bow tie. 

Clara dropped the sink to the floor with a clatter.

“Oh boy,” she said.


	2. Bow Tie

“Oh, no! Have I landed on Wednesday? I didn’t mean to. I was aiming for Saturday. And we’re at Coal Hill School, correct?”

“Um, it’s Monday, but otherwise, yeah, Coal Hill. Yeah. Uh-huh,” Clara was looking into the face of the Doctor as he used to be. Before his regeneration. Before he went all eyebrows and Scottish.

“Come here, you,” the Doctor suddenly smiled and pulled Clara into a hug and kissed her on the forehead. “I haven’t seen you in about … by your reckoning, oh, two years!”

“T-two years?” Clara stammered as she processed the fact the Doctor had just done something he hadn’t done in a long time. Hugging had returned a while ago to their relationship, but she hadn’t been able to get him to start kissing her yet—on the cheek or forehead, that is. 

“Yeah, sorry, after I dropped you home after the thing with the crimson goop, I got swept up in a revolution near Alpha Centauri a half million years from now. Took me a bit to sort it out. But I knew I had you to look forward to when I finally got it dealt with.”

Clara smiled. “Why are you here, Doctor?”

“I received a signal from around this vicinity. For some reason, Coal Hill has always been a bit of a magnet for alien activity—I think my granddaughter might have … never mind—and I thought I’d check up on it.”

“Skovox Blitzer?” Clara blurted out.

“Bless you. I didn’t recognize the origin of the signal. Which made me even more curious, so I had the old girl take me here.” The Doctor paused a moment, as he finally got a good look at Clara in the somewhat-dim console room light. “Why aren’t you with Angie and Artie?”

Clara thought long and hard about her answer. She knew she had to be very careful how she replied. From the Doctor’s perspective, she hadn’t applied for the teaching job yet—and hadn’t even enrolled in teacher school; she did that after that first visit to Trenzalore and that was still ahead for him. As far as he was concerned, she was still a twenty-four-year-old nanny. If he knew she was a future Clara (from his perspective), it might create a paradox that would endanger everything—her jumping into his timestream, her convincing him to find another way to end the Time War, her convincing the Time Lords to give him more lives, and everything they’d shared together after his regeneration—all of it could be jeopardized.

“I’m … volunteering at the school. Nina, a friend of mine, is a teacher here and she asked me to help out for parent-teacher night.” Clara suppressed the guilt at lying. She told Danny, at the end, how she’d never lie to the Doctor. But sometimes, she just had to. For his sake. 

The Doctor looked her up and down. “Look at you, all teacher-y looking, then. And have you had a haircut?” 

Clara nodded and flipped her hair in response. “What do you think?”

“I don’t like it,” the Doctor grumped.

Clara stuck her tongue out at him.

“Careful, Clara: on the planet Idrax IX, that’s the first stage of the Idraxian wedding ceremony.”

“Oh yeah? What comes next?” Oh, God, Clara thought, I didn’t just bat my eyelashes at him did I? I’m back to flirting with the Doctor again.

“The Idraxian groombride then gives the traditional response.”

“Go on.”

“‘That’s a lovely tongue, now show me your belly button.’”

Clara and the Doctor locked eyes for a moment. Then, realizing she’d been japed, Clara burst out laughing.

“Got ya,” the Doctor said, with a smile.

Clara’s mobile chirped a quiet alarm. Time to return to the salt mines.

“Uh, Doctor, I need to take care of … a thing. Will you be all right on your own here? You won’t be burning down the science wing or anything?”

“Shouldn’t think so. What type of a thing?”

“Just helping … things. Parent-teacher interview things. They need me to … serve coffee to the parents. And … hand out cook-”

Even before the word “cookie” had completely formed, Clara knew she’d gone a fib too far.

“ _Cookies!_ That sounds marvellous! I wonder if they have jammy dodgers or those odd brick-shaped shortbread ones. I could murder an oatmeal or two. I think I’ll sneak in a grab a few.”

“No!” Clara said, her voice rising to a mouse-like level of squeakiness. “I mean … they aren’t that kind of cookies. Just dull ones. Digestives…” The Doctor scowled. “…and ginger snaps.” The Doctor’s scowl went to Defcon 5.

“Ginger snaps. I hate ginger snaps. Too gingery and not snappy enough.”

“Tell you what. I’ll go and tend to the … thing … and you tend to your … thing … and I’ll bring you some coffee when I’m done.”

“Okay,” the Doctor said, his scowl turning back into a fond smile. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” Clara said, smiling back. As she left the storeroom, she considered barricading the door from the outside to keep the young Doctor in. She immediately dismissed the idea. She respected him too much and, besides, he’d probably just do some zappy thing with his sonic screwdriver and get out anyway. With any luck, he would be able to get everything he needed done without having to leave the TARDIS or the storeroom.

She leaned against the door to compose herself as she realized what had just happened. Of course, she’d met previous incarnations of the Doctor before; technically, she met _all_ of them through her echoes, though most of those encounters she only remembered through dreams. It had never occurred to her, after the Doctor changed the last time, that she might someday run into the old model, the one she fell for in the first place, with his this-is-not-a-snog-box TARDIS. His change to an older, more severe persona had ended the playful flirting, but over time he became someone she bonded with so deeply, she was seriously considering cutting ties with her own world just to be with him always. She still had so much to learn from him—and, to be honest, so much to teach him, too. 

Enough musing … it was back to the parents. Somehow, though, even though it was technically the wrong Doctor, the prospect of facing another set of grumpy parents suddenly didn’t seem so bad knowing he was nearby. 

Clara stood on the threshold of the auditorium, took a deep breath, and entered. 

Had she chanced to look down the hall in the opposite direction of where the younger Doctor had materialized his TARDIS, she might have seen a familiar flashing light coming from behind the door of _another_ supply room.


	3. Eyebrows

Forget Daleks, Clara thought. Turned inside out and squashed flat by the Boneless. That was more like it.

It was an hour later and Clara had just said goodbye to the last set of parents. It was obvious that the flight instinct of her fellow educators was in full force as all of her colleagues seemed to vanish with the parents—likely headed to the nearest pub—leaving Clara in the blissful quiet and solitude of the auditorium, with only the hum of a caretaker’s floor polisher operating somewhere else in the school providing background noise.

All Clara wanted was to sleep. She took advantage of the quiet to put her forehead down on the cool wooden surface of the table, just for a moment. So tempting to just nod off right there, to hell with what Mr. Armitage might think. The caretakers could pack her away with the tables if they wanted to, just as long as they gave her a pillow.

She felt a cool hand gently squeeze her shoulder. She smiled. Oh yeah, _he_ was still here. And, by the smell of things, he’d brought coffee. She lifted her head off the table with a dreamy expression.

Which turned into a look of shock as she found herself staring into two piercing blue-grey eyes topped by fierce eyebrows that seemed to default to “terrify” mode. 

“Uh, hi?” she said.

“You seem surprised to see me, Clara,” said the Doctor. _Her_ Doctor.

“Um, it’s not Wednesday, is it?” She had the sudden thought that her wish to take forty winks had accidentally turned into reality.

“No, Clara, but you told me you had parent night and the last time you had one of these, you begged to be dropped into the atmosphere of Venus without a parachute, so I thought you could use a friendly face.” The Doctor gave her a genuine smile—something that was coming more and more naturally to him. “And some coffee.” He handed her a cup that she took a sip of, almost automatically. 

“You, uh, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not, Clara?” The Doctor actually looked a bit hurt, but then he looked her in the eye. “What’s wrong?” Dammit, his sixth sense was kicking in about her again.

“Nothing! I just … you saw me nearly pass out just now. I’m feeling a bit under the weather. Think I’m going to turn in early. Tomorrow’s a day off for the school, so come in the morning. We’ll have the whole bonus day and I’ll feel better by then, I promise.”

The Doctor sniffed. He wasn’t buying it. “Clara, I know that face, remember. And I have the manual memorized now; you’re giving me number twenty-two. What’s wrong?”

“Seriously, nothing, just a little …” And then a mad idea struck her. It would mean abandoning Bow Tie, even though she’d wanted to spend some time with him again, for old time’s sake (as well as making sure the school was in no real danger). But she knew that meeting oneself is embarrassing at best, catastrophic at worst. It had happened numerous times before, earlier in the Doctor’s lives and the stars still filled the heavens, but the Doctor also stressed upon her the fact that such “reunions” were _always_ risky for the continued existence of all living matter. The solution was simple—get her Doctor back to his TARDIS and have him take her for cocktails in the eightieth century or something.

Clara’s desire for alcohol took an immediate upgrade to double shots of Johnny Walker Blue as she saw a familiar silhouette through the frosted glass of the auditorium door. With a near-burlesquian gulp, Clara shot out of her chair and started racing for the door with impressive paces for her petite frame.

“What’s wrong, Clara?” her Doctor asked.

“Oh, nothing. I just realized I … left some confidential student notes out on my desk and if anyone sees them, that’s my job. You stay here. Have some coffee. I’ll be back in a few.”

The Doctor glared in her direction, perplexed. And then he noticed a lonely basketball on the floor, against a wall. “ _Hmmmm…_ ”

Out in the hall, Clara waylaid the younger Doctor. “What are you doing?” she asked, as casually as she could manage.

“The signal seems to be getting stronger at this end of the school,” the Doctor said. Suddenly, a muted _thump … thump … thump_ was heard coming from the auditorium. Then a pause. Then another _thump … thump … thump_.

“Have you got machinery active in that room?” the Doctor asked.

Clara looked at the door, puzzled. What the hell was the Doctor doing in there? “Um… there’s a practice for a big game tomorrow, I guess.”

The younger Doctor shrugged and turned down the corridor and, to Clara’s relief, away from the auditorium. The sound of breaking glass from the gym and a muted curse, however, caused him to turn back. 

The auditorium door swung open and Clara had a split second to react. She couldn’t allow the two Doctors to see one another, so she threw herself at Bow Tie and kissed him firmly on the lips, bending him back like the sailor did with the nurse in that old WWII V-J Day photo.

Eyebrows was about to say something when he paused and took in the scene. “Oh, uh, sorry to interrupt. I … there’s been a spillage and I just need to get some towels and a dustpan. I know where they are. Don’t … mind me…” And he sulked down the hall towards the janitorial supply closet.

Clara broke off the kiss and let Bow Tie get upright again.

“Yabba-dabba-do!” he said. “To what do I owe that honour?”

“I missed you,” Clara said. No lie, really.

“Remind me to spend time subduing intergalactic revolutions more often!” He straightened his tie. “We’ll have to take this up later, I’m afraid. I still have to search out the source of the signal.”

He started to follow Eyebrows, but Clara spun him around in the opposite direction. “You were heading _this_ way, Doctor,” she said.

“Yes, I was…” Bow Tie said, already distracted by his sonic screwdriver. Clara wondered if he’d already forgotten the kiss. It had been impulsive and successfully prevented Eyebrows from seeing Bow Tie, but she couldn’t say she regretted it, completely.

Clara shot off down the hall and encountered Eyebrows coming back with a towel and a dustpan in his hands. She notice right away that he wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

“What happened?” Clara asked.

“Small accident. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you and …”

“Adrian. You’d met him before,” Clara said, thinking fast. Adrian was one of her fellow teachers at Coal Hill. He bore a very superficial resemblance to Bow Tie, enough for Eyebrows to mistake him for her new boyfriend around time of his disastrous introduction to Danny and the Skovox Blitzer invasion.

“I should go. I don’t mean to intrude,” Eyebrows said. “I’ll just clean up the little mess I made and, I guess, I’ll see you Wednesday?”

Clara knew she’d made a mistake. Ever since Danny died, the Doctor had made the occasional suggestion that she should find someone else. (It’s not like ordering someone from eBay, she’d mused the first time.) He never seemed to realize that she _had_ found someone else. If he’d had any competence in reading body language he’d have probably been able to get the hint back at the Drum. For now, though, she was going to have to pretend that she had followed his advice. Keeping the timeline straight had to take priority. She’d make it up to him later.

So, with that, “It’s okay, but yeah maybe it’s better if we got together on our usual night.”

Eyebrows perked up a little. “Maybe you can invite Adrian to come along? It’s kind of a shame Danny never wanted to travel with us. It’s been a long time since I had two schoolteachers in the TARDIS.”

“Probably not. He gets … space sick,” Clara vamped, inwardly groaning. What the hell was that? she thought.

“It’s not for everyone. Courtney Woods had a little … spillage herself her first time out, as I recall,” Eyebrows said.

They were at the door and Eyebrows went inside the auditorium. A crash and a clatter down the hall caught Clara’s attention, but fortunately not his. 

“Oh my stars,” Clara mumbled to herself. She’d better go check, though she knew full well it was probably going to be Bow Tie in one of his clumsy moments. She smiled fondly as she headed down the corridor. Same old, same old.

A slightly more muted clatter helped her hone in on the appropriate classroom. With a quick check back towards the auditorium to make sure Eyebrows was still occupied, she clicked open the door.

And came face to face with a monster.


	4. The Monster

Clara stifled her scream—one lesson she’d learned from the Doctor over the years is screaming often made monsters angrier because a little-known fact is many monsters have sensitive hearing—and threw herself back against the opposite side of the hall. 

Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to close the door, too. The Monster, as Clara named it in her head (not particularly original, she had to admit, but she didn’t have a lot of time to prepare a shortlist of names), squeezed through the doorway.

The top half could have been humanlike, if one squinted while looking through a piece of gauze at it. Four eyes were placed seemingly at random on a face that had no visible nose, and a mouth that seemed to split the head in two.

The body had eight legs (A relative of the spider? Clara’s inner Doctor voice mused) that were hairless and covered with what at first glance appeared to be leather. Clothing? Do Monsters wear trousers? 

One oddity about the Monster that Clara noticed right off was that he/she/they gave off no odour whatsoever. Clara had long gotten used to experiencing unusual smells during her travels, not all of which would pass muster as fine perfume. Daleks smelled like metal shavings. Sontarans, bizarrely, did actually smell somewhat like the tuber they often were said to resemble. Slitheen … best not to think about it. Sometimes, to her amusement, the Doctor smelled like he had taken a bath in chocolate. This one, though, smelled of nothing. A predator, then? One that had evolved away a potential weakness for hunting?

Maybe one, but it was breathing so loudly—panting, maybe?—that she was surprised she didn’t hear it in the middle of the parent interviews down the hall.

Clara tried to keep her fear in check. For one thing, had no reason to think it was a threat. It was an alien, no more. Granted, the last time an alien visited Coal Hill School (Doctor notwithstanding), the Skovox Blitzer had intended to destroy the planet. So there was that.

The high-pitched trill of a sonic came from her left as the Doctor—Bow Tie—came out of another classroom and advanced on the Monster. “Stay very still, Clara. Very, very still.”

“What is it?” she whispered.

“No idea. Any suggestions?”

“I just call it a Monster.”

“Now, that’s not very nice. This might be someone’s mum, you know.”

Actually, Bow Tie had a point. Clara felt a little guilty that her default name was “Monster” when, for all she knew, this creature was just a baby, or an explorer.

Whatever it was, it all but filled the hallway. Which was probably a good thing for the time-space continuum because, moments later, she heard, to her right: “Stay very still, Clara. Very, very still.” The Doctor—Eyebrows—had his sonic sunglasses on and was scanning the creature.

“Who is that?” Bow Tie said. “Never mind, just tell whoever it is to get back. Let me handle this.”

Unable to clearly hear what his counterpart had said, Eyebrows made a near-identical demand.

Before Clara had to actually choose which Doctor to obey, the creature did an abrupt one-eighty (seriously, it was as if it was able to somehow turn itself inside-out like a sock—another valuable hunting mechanism?) and squeezed back through the door, smashing out a window and escaping to the outside.

With the abrupt departure of the creature, the hallway was now unobscured. All three occupants were momentarily preoccupied with looking towards the open window.

The two Doctors spun on their heels to face Clara.

“Are you alright, Clara?” they asked in stereo. Surprisingly, it actually took them to the end of that sentence before they realized the other was saying the exact same thing.

It was Eyebrows who made the connection first. Of course, he would.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded of Bow Tie.

“Uh … new caretaker?” Bow Tie replied, weakly.


	5. Basil

Oh great, Clara thought, all I need is to have to break up a brawl between two Doctors. She was reminded of the day her dad’s cat first met his new girlfriend’s dog. It did _not_ end well. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a spray bottle filled with water handy to distract the two Doctors off each other.

Eyebrows took in his younger self and, with undisguised fury in his face, stalked close to him. Bow Tie, however, stood his ground.

“Who are you?” Bow Tie said. “No, don’t tell me, it doesn’t matter. This is a very dangerous place to be right now. Please, let me and my friend take care of this.”

Eyebrows looked at Clara. “ _Your_ friend? Excuse me, I think you’ll find she’s my associate now.”

“Now, you listen to me, I don’t know who you are, but-” started Bow Tie. By now, Clara had had enough.

“Quiet, you two!”

“But, Clara, he’s…” That was Eyebrows.

“Open your mouth once more, and in goes my finger!” Clara shot back, leaving that for Eyebrows to interpret as she turned her attention to Bow Tie.

“Now, you … Doctor … you really need to trust me. Do you trust me?”

Eyebrows started to say something, but Clara pointed a mouth-directed finger in his direction and he shut up.

“Yes, Clara, of course I do,” Bow Tie said.

“Good. He’s with me, or I’m with him, take your pick. And I trust him, so that means you can trust him, all right?” Bow Tie nodded and Clara continued. “Now, aren’t we forgetting something? There’s a Monster or a creature or a thing now running around Shoreditch and I don’t need to deal with that sort of gossip.” She turned toward Eyebrows. “Now, Basil…”

It took a moment for Eyebrows to react. It was a name he had picked up during a recent adventure when he needed an alias and admitted that he’d grown tired of “John Smith.” 

“Basil … this is the Doctor. He’s an … old friend. We used to work together. At UNIT. Before you joined.” She was vamping at full bore now. 

“You’re with UNIT?” Bow Tie asked. “How’s Kate Stewart?”

“Same old, same old,” Eyebrows replied. “Still scares the hell out of me.”

“Nice to know we have that in common. All right, Basil— _oooh_ , I like that name; I used to have a toy fox named Basil. Or maybe that was a TV show I saw once. Forget the toy fox. Now, if you are with UNIT, I take it you’re familiar with my work?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“So I don’t need to explain to you that there’s such a thing as alien life and this planet is constantly being threatened by some otherworldly force bent on domination, destruction, finding a new food supply, etc., etc., or all of the above?”

Eyebrows nodded slowly. “Now that you put it that way, it does make me want to crawl into a hole and hide, but yeah,” he said, giving Clara a “Was I always like that?” sort of look. She replied with a shrug that said, “Don’t be daft—you still are.”

“So, would you like to see the inside of my TARDIS?” Bow Tie put on a mischievous smile. 

“Oh, lead on, I cannot wait,” Eyebrows said.

And so Bow Tie led Eyebrows and Clara back to where his TARDIS was parked. As they brought up the rear, Eyebrows moved in to talk to Clara, but she held up a finger menacingly. “Not now,” she mouthed.

They soon arrived at the storage room.

“Once you go through here, prepare to have your concept of transdimensional physics turned on its ear,” Bow Tie said as he opened the door with a theatrical flourish. 

Eyebrows motioned for Clara to go in first.


	6. TARDIS

Eyebrows was still playing nice for Clara’s sake (and the still-standing potential threat of a neatly manicured digit inserted in his piehole), but be damned if he was going to give his earlier self the satisfaction of yet another “Oh my God, how amazing!” reaction. Some day, he wanted to give a properly amazed reaction to seeing the inside of a TARDIS—something more original than, “It’s bigger on the inside.” But not today.

“Well, it’s bigger than a bread box,” Eyebrows said simply as he took in the (to him) outdated console room, with the excitement of one used to driving a Ferrari getting a look for the first time in years at the beaten-up Honda Civic one had driven as a teenager. 

“Is that all you have to say?” Bow Tie looked distinctly disappointed.

“Well, I think it’s as beautiful as ever,” Clara chimed, winning an adoring smile from Bow Tie. They locked eyes and Clara was immediately transported back to younger days. 

Eyebrows cleared his throat. “Monster? Shoreditch? Possibly eating a little old lady in her bed?”

Spell broken, Bow Tie frowned. “Quite right. I need to use the TARDIS to triangulate the signal that appears to be coming from the creature. Maybe it has some sort of implanted GPS-like thingy? Won’t take a minute. Clara, why don’t you show Basil around? I’ll shout out when I’ve got a fix.”

“Yes, Doctor. Basil, follow me. I’ll show you the room where he keeps his jammy dodgers.”

“Be sure to grab me a packet or two? I never did get any cookies at the school,” Bow Tie said, not looking up from the console.

Down a corridor and out of earshot, Eyebrows leaned in to Clara.

“What the hell is going on?” he said.

“I tried to keep him from seeing you. He turned up just before you did. Said he was tracing that signal.”

“I don’t remember such a thing ever happening, which means the timeline won’t let me remember, so you didn’t need to go through all that, Clara. Don’t you recall what happened the last time? You could have told me.”

“You also told me paradoxes are unpredictable. Would you have wanted me to take the risk if I could avoid it? I’m still waiting for you to tell me the rules, Doctor.” 

Eyebrows looked guilty for a moment. “You handled it properly. I just … I was so young back then. And was I always that … flirty? And I guess that was _him_ you were, you know…” He brushed a finger over his lips.

“I had to do something fast to stop him from seeing you.” Eyebrows’ frown made her smile a little. “Why, Doctor, are you jealous? Of yourself?”

“Remember what I told you after I regenerated?”

“You hated the colour of your new kidneys.”

“No, no … well, yes and I still do … but I meant later. When I said I thought of myself as your boyfriend when I was … him.”

“And then you said you didn’t feel that way anymore. I never realized you felt that way in the first place.” Clara couldn’t stop a wave of sadness pass across her face for a moment. It did not go unnoticed by Eyebrows, who committed it to memory for later cataloging. 

“I thought we’d moved past that. Boyfriends, girlfriends … they just do boring boyfriendy, girlfriendy things. Don’t you think our time together is more rewarding than going out for fish and chips and a movie?”

“Don’t be jealous. He was my first Doctor, but you are _my_ Doctor.” She reached up and cupped his cheek with her hand, a form of affection she’d adopted recently and which the Doctor clearly enjoyed, if the goose bumps she always felt erupt on his skin as she made contact were any indication. The meaning of the gesture—“This I do for you and for you alone” —was unspoken, but still clear in her large, dark eyes as she smiled at him.

Eyebrows subtly pressed against her palm like he always did, but then looked uncomfortable for a moment. “But what if I trip over a brick or something?” He actually looked slightly on edge, as if such a thing was possible.

Clara smiled as she continued down the corridor. “Then watch your step and stay away from bricks.”

“Shouldn’t we be getting back to who’s-his-face?” Eyebrows called to her.

“Not without a few packets of jammy dodgers. You remember how grumpy you got when you didn’t have any for a while.”

“I’ve tried my best to forget.”


	7. MegaSpider

Eyebrows had to grudgingly admit he’d forgotten how delicious jammy dodgers were. This regeneration hadn’t really come with too many palate-related preferences, though he was able to tolerate alcohol again and had regained his sweet tooth for jelly babies. Which was probably why he was enjoying the cookie. It was like a jelly baby. Only it was a cookie. He made a mental note to find where the jammy dodger room had been hidden after the last TARDIS desktop upgrade.

“I’ve managed to track MegaSpider—I just made up the name, I think it’s cool—to three possible locations,” Bow Tie said. “He/she/they is probably scared and gone to ground. He/she/they actually seemed to be actually a little scared of you, Clara.”

“I seem to have that effect on eight-legged spider-like people who can turn themselves inside out,” Clara replied. “Plays hell with my social life.”

“Do you still carry a mobile, Clara?” Bow Tie asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Just checking. I stole a glance at a calendar and realized we’re a few years into the future. Last time I saw you, it was 2013 and now it’s … later,” Bow Tie said with a frown. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Clara replied honestly, sneaking a look at Eyebrows.

“Probably a good call. Don’t tell me anything I don’t want to know—especially whether or not you and I had any adventures after the thing with the crimson goop and _definitely_ don’t tell me if I tripped over a brick and went to meet my maker, or something. Long as I don’t know, anything in your past doesn’t become a fixed point for me. That said, though, I think being a teacher suits you.” He beamed with pride. “Anyway, so we’re a few years ahead—have you been lojacked yet, then?”

“Lo-what-ed?” Clara asked.

“Too early, too early,” Eyebrows whispered, shaking his head at Bow Tie, who frowned at Basil’s apparent insight, but nodded. Being with UNIT, Basil probably came into contact with all sorts of future tech, he figured.

“Never mind, we’ll have to do it old-school, then.” Bow Tie scanned Clara’s mobile with his screwdriver. “OK, it’s linked with my TARDIS … hey, why do you have a picture of a stick insect with grey fuzz as your icon for me?”

“Do I? Oh, I must have done that accidentally,” Clara stammered as she tried not to look Eyebrows in the eyebrows, though she knew said eyebrows had just set themselves to kill behind her.

“Basil, your phone, please,” Bow Tie said.

Eyebrows shook his head. “Don’t have one. Spoils the line of my jacket and I’m more into wearable tech these days.” He pointedly did not take his sonic specs out of his pocket, but instead added, “Trust me, I’ll be able to keep in contact.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’m sorry, my brain seems to have jumped a track,” Clara said. “What are we doing?”

“Three locations, three of us, think it through,” Eyebrows said.

Bow Tie set some coordinates and, after a very brief trip—the time rotor didn’t even have time to complete a rotation—a _thump_ signalled arrival.

“Where are we?” Clara asked.

“Just a quick jump down the block, closer to MegaSpider’s three possible locations,” Bow Tie said. “You didn’t really want to have to explain the wrecked doorframe and window to the custodial staff, do you?”

Eyebrows had to will himself to wait and allow his younger self to lead the way out of the TARDIS. “Follow me,” Bow Tie said.

“Yes, boss,” Eyebrows replied, but Clara immediately elbowed him.

“No, Basil. No. You don’t ‘Yes, boss’ anyone but me. That’s our thing,” she said, surprisingly sternly.

“Yes, Miss ‘He Gets Grumpy Without His Jammy Dodgers’ Oswald.”

Bow Tie turned around at the banter. “You two aren’t space-married or anything, are you?”

“Some days …” Clara began. “Just open the door and let’s get after ‘MegaSpider,’ eh?”


	8. Mr. Optimism

It was darker than it should have been for roughly 9 p.m. on a weeknight. There were actually no lights on in any of the windows on the street, and that included the streetlights and the traffic signal on the corner. This part of town was relatively quiet at that late hour and the darkness thinned the number of pedestrians significantly.

“Localized power outage,” Eyebrows offered.

“Caused by the ... thing?” Clara asked. She realized how silly she sounded saying “MegaSpider” a few moments earlier, Monster had been dropped from contention, so she had decided to leave the naming to Bow Tie. 

“Very possibly,” Bow Tie said. “Maybe he/she/they feeds on electricity?”

“Or he/she/they chewed through a main somewhere and got barbecued,” Eyebrows said.

“Thank you, Mr. Optimism,” said Bow Tie. “Okay, let’s split up. Clara: you check behind that store on the corner. Basil, follow me up the street—the other two locations are down this way.”

Clara nodded, accepted the penlight flashlight Bow Tie handed her from one of his infinite pockets. “What do I do if I spot it?”

“Call me. If you don’t see anything, call Basil on, er, whatever he uses that isn’t a phone, and he’ll know to check his location next. If you do see it, don’t go near it, whatever you do. We don’t need it taking off again. The fact the lights are out should hopefully help reduce the number of witnesses. Once we find it, maybe I can talk some sense into MegaSpider and get it to come back to the TARDIS so I can help get him/her/them home.”

“You realize he/she/they might not take kindly to that name,” Eyebrows said.

“Then I’ll ask it for its name. _Sheesh!_ ” Bow Tie shot back.

“Children, play nice,” Clara said as she set off, leaving Bow Tie alone with Eyebrows as the two men proceeded in the opposite direction.

“So, Basil, how long have you known Clara?” Bow Tie asked when they had put some distance between themselves and their companion.

“A while,” Eyebrows replied. Although he couldn’t remember this conversation, he already had a sense where it was probably heading.

“I don’t suppose you have any insight as to how it’s possible I met two people who sounded and, in one case at least, looked exactly like Clara, had similar names, and they both died trying to save me?”

“Sorry, spoilers,” Eyebrows said. His younger self needed to work that one out for himself.

“My wife used to say that. Drove me nuts.”

They walked on for a few more yards, which was long enough for Bow Tie to tire of the silence. “Does Clara ever mention me?” he asked. “I mean … it’s pretty obvious she isn’t travelling with me anymore at this point in her life. Which is fine. My companions come and go. They go on with their lives. And they’re always amazing. And she’s working for UNIT now? And a schoolteacher, to boot…”

“Doctor, you of all people should know the dangers of asking such questions,” Eyebrows interrupted, serious, yet sympathetic. “I can’t tell you why she no longer travels with you specifically anymore, but I can say that she misses you. She speaks of you often and I do get the feeling she wishes you were still with her. I try my best, but I feel sometimes like I’m a poor copy.”

“Why? She’s in love with you,” Bow Tie stated, bluntly. 

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’ve known humans long enough to tell, and I’ve seen her when you’re not looking at each other. She’s clearly moved on from me, not that there was anything between us, not really. So don’t sell yourself short. I met a very nice couple, Alec and Emma, and Alec never thought to give any welly to the fact Emma might have felt something for him because he was twenty-five years older than she was. But after Clara and I shared an adventure with them, they got together and had a long, happy marriage. Clara is a great friend, and one of the most loyal people I have ever encountered in my travels. You, sir, are a very lucky man.”

Eyebrows considered his predecessor’s words carefully. He long suspected that Clara had more than just platonic feelings for him—that much had become clear at the Drum, though there had been the occasional moment, even when she was with Danny (what was it about his voice that inspired her to compare it to mood lighting once?)—but what right did he have to push things in a direction that would end ultimately in heartbreak for both of them? They never stayed with him for long. None of them. Even the ones he loved as more than just friends, and there’d been a few along the way, they all left him in the end (except for River, technically, and that was only because of his own cowardice). 

Some day, he knew the same would happen with Clara. The Doctor often prayed to any deity interested in listening (some of whom he had even met on occasion and knew owed him a few favours) that it would be of her own choice when that time came; she’d fall in love with some alien prince or princess maybe, or get elected prime minister of Great Britain. 

Bow Tie drew to a stop. “Okay, Basil, you head down behind that petrol station. Wait until Clara contacts you, and then do your search and then contact me with what you find. I’ll check the warehouse one block further down, but I’ll wait till I hear from you.” He checked his sonic. “The signal is still unclear, though it doesn’t look like MegaSpider is actually inside any of the buildings, which is a mixed blessing. Less chance of hurting anyone, but, if we spook it, it could go anywhere.”

Eyebrows slipped on his sonic sunglasses. Bow Tie cocked an eyebrow. “Would you like one of my flashlights?”

“I eat a lot of carrots,” Eyebrows responded and disappeared across the car park towards the station.

“I eat a lot of carrots,” Bow Tie scoffed quietly. “I can see why Clara likes you. Then again, who got the snog of a lifetime a half hour ago?” He smiled and straightened his tie. And then he slapped himself. “ _Ow!_ ” he told his right hand and he was about to give his appendage a good telling off until he noticed his left hand making a fist. “Okay, okay, I get the hint!”


	9. Cast-Offs

Clara tried not to think too hard about the fact she was dancing with an immense paradox having the two Doctors so close together. Of course, maybe Eyebrows was right. If he couldn’t remember all of this, than maybe time would sort itself out, like it supposedly did after Bow Tie, Sandshoes, and Captain Grumpy got together to find a way to stop the Time War without killing off all of Gallifrey (with no small amount of help from a certain schoolteacher, Clara mused—that’s a trip to the Eye of Orion _and_ dinner in Vegas with Sinatra he owed her). 

Afterwards, Bow Tie had said that, while Sandshoes and Grumpy probably lost the knowledge the moment they left the Undergallery in their respective TARDISes, he’d now, as the “latest model,” finally be able to retain all the knowledge—which led to him breaking down as the guilt he’d carried for centuries evaporated in a rush. Oddly, though, after they had hugged for a long time, when Clara had asked what the Curator of the Undergallery had had to say to him at the end, Bow Tie had simply answered, “Who?”

Clara’s rumination was interrupted by a scraping sound to her right as she passed behind an electronics store that was shut down for the night. She took note of the surveillance camera mounted on the corner of the building, but it seemed to be deactivated. 

The scraping happened again, and Clara tensed up. There were probably a dozen reasons not to proceed further, but the pounding of her heart was exhilarating, and it overrode her rational mind. Business as usual, then.

It’s nearby, she thought. It has to be.

Two glowing eyes suddenly became visible, low to the ground, next to a trash bin. Clara said, “Hello? Can you understand me? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a friend.” Did the TARDIS translate that? 

The glowing eyes moved behind the trash bin and out the other side, and Clara now saw the distinct outline of …

…a rather rotund house cat with black fur and white cuffs that resembled a tuxedo.

“Oh, hello. So you’re not a giant spider creature thing, then.”

The cat gave her a “you’re an idiot” look (which, as the Doctor could explain, is exactly what it was, but we won’t get into that right now) and immediately forgot about the human as she spotted a shiny thing glistening in the moonlight that captured her attention.

Clara followed the cat with her eyes and then the shiny thing glinting in the moonlight captured her attention, too.

“What have you found there, eh?” she mumbled as she walked over to the object. The cat hissed, but yielded the find as it evidently held no culinary interest.

It was a piece of something that looked like leather that Clara recognized as part of MegaSpider’s “trousers.” There was a second, similar cast-off nearby.

Clara took out her phone and dialled Eyebrows. “Doctor, it’s me. I found something that was attached to the creature’s arms, but that’s it. It must have moved on.”

“Thank you, Clara. Come down the road. I’m at the petrol station.”

“Be careful.”

***

Eyebrows tapped the stem of his classes, ending the phone call with Clara, and reminded himself how much he hated the smell of petrol. It always made him think of flamethrowers. Several darkened pumps stood on guard in front of the small station. A tall, freckle-faced boy was standing in the doorway of the shop.

“Uh, excuse me, sir. The station’s closed because of the outage. Can’t serve you till the lights come back on—and I couldn’t open the till if I wanted to,” the minimum-wager said, giving the older man a bit of side-eye as he noticed Eyebrows was wearing sunglasses.

Eyebrows was a little insulted by this. “Do I really look like someone who wants to rob you?” he asked.

“My mate, Kevin, got robbed last week at his shop in Haggerston, he did. Little old lady did it. Came in looking like Betty White, walked out like Bonnie and Clyde. Without Clyde. And with about £100.”

Good old Betty, Eyebrows suddenly thought. He withdrew his psychic paper holder. “I think you’ll find I’m authorized to be here.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “It says you’re a scout for _Britain’s Got Talent_.”

Eyebrows sighed, slowly took the psychic paper out of the folder, stared at it for a second, and then calmly ripped it in two. It was advertised as being able to deliver two hundred readings, but the manual _had_ warned the last twenty or so were going to be a bit … erratic. Fortunately, he had fresh papers … back in his TARDIS, which was still parked at the school.

So he tried another tactic. He began quietly: “Actually, there’s a creature of unknown, but alien origin prowling the neighbourhood. It's probably responsible for shutting off the lights, and the government’s sent me to round it up. We call it … the MegaSpider.” He put his best Ghoulardi impersonation behind uttering the name. 

Even in the dim moonlight, Eyebrows could tell the boy’s face was reddening.

“Now, you can help me capture this creature, or you can calmly walk down the street and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. The store is locked up, yeah?”

The boy nodded.

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about. Except for MegaSpider. Now, run.”

The boy ran, nearly bowling over Clara in the process.

“You didn’t just traumatize another kid, did you? I’ve told you about that before,” she said.

“A little paranoia goes a long way,” Eyebrows said. 

“Do you see anything?”

Eyebrows scanned the darkness behind the station with his glasses. There was a fence separating the station property from a park beyond, and assorted trash bins and petrol-station detritus filled much of the gap between the building and the fence. It wasn’t too different from what Clara had seen a couple of blocks back up the road.

“Be very, very quiet…” Eyebrows whispered, crouching down.

“… we’re hunting wabbits,” Clara whispered back. Eyebrows uncrouched and looked down at her. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

“You’re not taking this very seriously, Clara.” Eyebrows recrouched and continued scanning.

“What, the fact we’re hunting an alien whose only crime so far is breaking a window, or the fact that there are two of you within a shout of each other and one wrong word and there’s a good chance we’ll be paradoxed into a very bad evening?”

“We’ll deal with Mr. Bow Tie in good time,” Eyebrows said. He then started slightly and peered intently into the darkness, his sonic glasses making a faint buzzing sound. He reached out and shifted some of the debris—cardboard and wooden posts, mostly. The type of junk that seems to accumulate, even where there is no need for things like cardboard and wooden posts. 

“Oh, that’s just wrong,” Clara said as she saw what was revealed.

It was the bottom half of MegaSpider’s body—the legs, mainly. Strings of white, chitin-like material strung out in all directions from where presumably the creature’s torso had been connected to the legs. It reminded Clara of something she saw once in a remake of _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ that she’d unwisely viewed late at night when her mum and dad were out visiting friends. She’d had nightmares for weeks and, despite all she’d seen in her travels with the Doctor, she wouldn’t lay bets on her ability to achieve forty winks the next time her head touched a pillow.

Eyebrows turned to Clara. “Call him.”

Clara did as she was told, telling Bow Tie of their discovery and promising to be with him immediate-

The sudden sound of a scream stopped Clara from finishing that sentence.

“Doctor? Doctor!” she cried into the phone.

Eyebrows was already running down the street towards the warehouse.


	10. Francis

A few minutes earlier, Bow Tie was still mumbling to himself about smug grey-haired men and carrots when he arrived at the warehouse. The structure was about ten storeys tall, which was problematic if he/she/they had decided to head for the roof, as there were no visible ladders or any other means of climbing up for someone lacking wall-scaling-without-climbing-gear ability.

Bow Tie considered that this would have been a great excuse to break out the jetpack he’d borrowed from the set of _Thunderball_ and had neglected to return, but the TARDIS was too far up the street to make the return trip worthwhile—though it would have shown up that upstart, Basil. 

_You_ might have Clara going all heart-eyes at you, but do _you_ have a jetpack? I think not.

With a hope, then, that MegaSpider hadn’t decided to take the high road after all, Bow Tie skirted towards the alleyway behind the building, his sonic held out like Harry Potter wields his wand, the green glow doubling as a flashlight—a fact that did not go unnoticed as Bow Tie passed a young couple out for a stroll, one of whom took it upon themselves to waste oxygen by uttering the words, “Cool flashlight!”

 _Humph_ , Bow Tie thought. The pinnacle of Time Lord science, the fruits of many hours of hard labour, trial and error and social contact-free evenings, the ultimate in hand-held tech … and all they have to say for it is “cool flashlight.” Humans.

Then again, the way it lit up the side of the building _was_ kind of cool and reminded him of an old 1940s detective movie he once saw. He took a moment to create a giant shadow puppet of a bunny on the wall. 

Behind the warehouse, the alleyway was filled with more trash bins and junk of the type usually found in alleyways. More cardboard. More wooden posts and planks. What set this collection of debris apart from that seen by Eyebrows and Clara, however, is that there was a row of about seven trash bins … and the trash bin third from the right was swaying back and forth.

As Bow Tie leaned around the corner of the building to get a better look, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. “Yes?” he said as quietly as possible as he answered it.

“We didn’t find the alien at either of our locations—but we did find bits of him/her/they/whatever,” Clara said. “Doctor, that includes the thing’s legs. All eight of them, tossed away like trash. Stay put, we’ll be with you immed-”

By this point, Bow Tie was shouting because he had just been hit square in the face by the third trash bin from the left (sneaky beggar, he thought). His phone clattered to the ground. He could hear Clara's voice: “Doctor? Doctor!” 

Momentarily stunned, Bow Tie couldn’t immediately stop the rain of blows that came from a pair of pale green arms that protruded from the creature’s torso. No longer covered by the leather-like exoskeleton, they seemed weak, but there was no denying that the creature put some welly behind them as blows rained down on Bow Tie’s forearms that were raised to protect himself. 

The pummelling had the fringe benefit of pulling Bow Tie out of his momentary stupor and he tucked in his legs and rolled away. He got up and found himself towering over the creature that was standing on a set of eight small legs—no longer the long, spindly, spider-like appendages of before. It backpedalled further back into the alleyway, fearful of further confrontation now that Bow Tie was on his feet.

“MegaSpider” no longer resembled the huge creature in the school. Now, it looked smaller, younger, almost renewed.

Renewed… Bow Tie considered that fact for a moment.

The pounding of two sets of feet entered earshot behind him as Eyebrows—running at an impressive clip—pulled up next to him, followed by Clara who was no slouch in the speed-demon department herself when she set her mind at it. 

“Are you okay, Doctor?” Clara asked, clasping Bow Tie’s arm. He barely noticed as he was keeping an eye on the creature, who also held Eyebrows’ rapt attention.

“Metamorphosis … absolutely beautiful,” Eyebrows said, his awe undisguised.

“Isn’t it?” Bow Tie agreed. “Looks like its arrival on Earth corresponded with it having to shed its old skin and begin again. Sound familiar?” If that last was addressed at Eyebrows, it hadn’t registered.

“Can we talk to it?” Clara asked as she inched towards the creature. Both Bow Tie and Eyebrows allowed her to pass, but both were prepared to yank her back at a moment’s notice. “Hello. Can you understand me? We’re not trying to hurt you. You just gave us a bit of a fright, that’s all. My name is Clara. These are my friends, the Doctor and Basil. Do you understand?” Come on TARDIS, there are two of you within a few blocks of this place, Clara thought, between you, you should be able translate for this poor little guy (little being an operative word as he was still several inches taller than Clara).

“Yesssssss,” the creature said. “I underssssstand.”

Clara smiled as the two Doctors exchanged a look of shared pride.

“What is your name?” she asked.

The creature made a sound similar to that made by a tabby cat when a lumberjack accidentally sits on him.

“Why don’t we call you Francis for now?” suggested Bow Tie. 

“Fraaaancis…” Francis replied with a nod. "Claarrra..." Francis then said and Francis’ face—grotesque perhaps by human standards but likely relatively normal for his own species—broke into a smile. 

“Where do you come from?” Eyebrows asked.

“I … do … not … know,” Francis said, the smile disappearing. “Woke … up … here. Not know why ...”

“Amnesia?” Clara asked.

“I don’t think so,” Eyebrows said. He sucked on a finger for a moment, as if perhaps ingesting a few extra skin cells might fire off a few extra brain cells. “I’ve got it! He’s a Mardaloopian.”

Bow Tie slapped his head, “Of course! The Mardaloopian rite of passage! But I thought it was outlawed by the Shadow Proclamation yonks ago.”

Eyebrows shrugged. “You know the Shadow Proclamation. First sign of a class-action lawsuit and they cave in like a rotten pear. It was unoutlawed.”

Clara was trying to comfort the apparently quite-young Mardaloopian, who was starting to shiver. Now that Francis was no longer the size of two Smart cars stacked one on top of the other, she was able to put her arm around the creature’s shoulders. “Care to fill us humans and Mardaloopians in on what you’re talking about?” Clara said.

Eyebrows deferred to Bow Tie. 

“When Mardaloopians reach their equivalent of puberty, they’re abandoned on an alien world and left to fend for themselves until they molt—that was the bit where Francis here threw…” Bow Tie looked Francis over for a moment and goldfished his mouth for a second before continuing … “…uh, the original exoskeleton. They shrink a bit as a result, but then once puberty is complete they’re back to their full size again and ready to, uh, mate. They get a temporary memory wipe and they’re supposed to find their own way back to the homeworld. Only about half survive.”

“But that’s awful,” Clara said.

“But a necessity, at least as far as their culture is concerned,” Eyebrows returned. “The homeworld is massively overcrowded and this is basically a form of lottery for them. But that’s why the Shadow Proclamation outlawed the practice until the homeworld got so overcrowded, they were sued into allowing it to happen again.”

“What … happens … to me … now?” Francis asked.

“We take you home, of course,” Bow Tie said. “I don’t know why they dropped you off on Earth. It’s about a century too early for the type of space travel you need to get back to your homeworld. Fortunately, you’ve got the Doctor here who’ll help you get home.”

“Uh, _you’re_ the Doctor,” Eyebrows said, uneasily.

“Please, ‘Basil,’ you stopped fooling me about an hour ago. I like the name, though—better than ‘John Smith.’ I always wanted to try ‘Doctor Funkenstein,’ myself,” Bow Tie said before bringing himself back on track. “Once we part company you know I’ll forget any of this ever happened and it would be unfair for Francis here to be put in that position. You and Clara can take him home in your TARDIS. And besides, I think he likes Clara.” Bow Tie pointed subtly in Francis’ general direction with his sonic, for Eyebrows’ eyes only. Eyebrows followed Bow Tie’s direction and nearly corpsed.

“What’s so funny?” Clara asked. “And when did we decide to start calling Francis a ‘he’ all of a sudden?”

“Count his legs,” said Eyebrows. 

Clara did so, and then the lights in the alleyway came back on, all the better for everyone to see how much she was blushing when she got to nine. 

She quickly removed her arm from around Francis’ shoulders. “Oh, uh, yeah, uh, Doctors, I’ll let you take it from here. Thanks. You’re a good boy, Francis, really. And you keep those cameras in your pocket … both of you.”

Bow Tie looked askance at Eyebrows.

“UNIT Christmas party. Slide show,” said Eyebrows.

“ _Ooooooh…._ ”


	11. Questions and a Prophecy

To distract both Clara and Francis from the slightly awkward situation, the two Doctors, in tandem, gave them their theory as to what had likely happened. The edited highlights are as follows:

The GPS-style tracker implanted within Francis’ brain that Bow Tie originally traced the signal from was intended to be used on worlds where Mardaloopians frequently put their teens through the rite of passage. The potential reason for Francis being placed on a backwater world (“Hey!” Clara interrupted indignantly. “Sorry,” said Bow Tie.), where only a randomly passing Time Lord would have possibly picked up the signal, troubled both Doctors, with Eyebrows resolving to take the matter up with the Mardaloopian government once he took Francis home.

A side effect of the tracker was that adrenaline (or the Mardaloopian equivalent thereof) often caused its signal to become erratic and, in this case, this manifested itself into a very mild and localized electromagnetic pulse that knocked out all power in the two-to-three block radius where Francis had ended up after escaping Coal Hill. The electricity was restoring itself as Francis calmed down (“Or, to be more precise, his adrenaline rush was replaced by, uh, another kind of rush,” Eyebrows said, delicately), but this now left the two Time Lords, Clara, and Francis unable to navigate the open street back to Bow Tie’s TARDIS without being spotted. 

Their lecture concluded, Eyebrows volunteered to hike back to Coal Hill and bring his TARDIS round.

That left Clara, Francis, and Bow Tie alone in the alleyway, which fortunately curved slightly out of sight of the street.

“So he’s me, then,” Bow Tie said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve had worse,” he said, with a smile. “I really don’t want to get old. I’ve had a long run of young bodies. But he can still run, at least. That’s pretty much a prerequisite to be me.”

“Don’t let the grey hair fool you,” Clara said. “He … you’re just as much the Doctor as ever.”

“Are we still good together, Clara? I spoke to him earlier … I wasn’t sure he was me yet at the time … and he seemed … unsure about himself.”

“Doctor, when I was with you, you were my best friend. We’ve had the occasional wobble since you changed ... okay, I won’t lie to you, we had a big wobble, but we’re good now. More than good. And you still are my best friend, for reasons you couldn’t even possibly believe.” Clara kissed Bow Tie gently on the cheek and hugged him tight for a moment. “We’re essential to each other. Always have been, always will be.”

“Do we still do this?” Bow Tie asked, enjoying the hug.

“Not as much as I’d like, but you’re coming around,” she whispered into his shoulder. 

“Good. My impossible girl.”

The wheezing, groaning sound of the TARDIS erupted about ten yards away and the blue box folded into view. Eyebrows stepped out. Clara’s jaw dropped; whereas before he’d been wearing his usual casual outfit with the checkered pants, print shirt featuring some indecipherable scrawl and his red-lined jacket, now he came out of the TARDIS in full burgundy velvet dinner-jacket splendour, ready for a night on the town, or the Magic Circle.

“Doctor, you didn’t …” Clara said, laughing. Show-off, she said to herself, though she had to admit he looked damned good. She was glad he let her pick the jacket when they’d visited Carnaby Street back in 1968.

“I spilled something on my trousers and decided to change. What?” Eyebrows said in all innocence.

Bow Tie broke into laughter. To Clara’s relief, so did Eyebrows.

“Clara,” Bow Tie said, “you better take Francis inside. I … he … will be with you in a few moments.”

Clara hugged Bow Tie tightly again. “I won’t see you again, will I.” It was not a question.

“Hey, now,” Bow Tie said. “Never say never. After all, did you wake up this morning expecting to see me again at your school?”

“No, but …” Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re going to forget me.”

“Clara Oswald, I could never forget you. Ever. Well, yes, okay, today, yeah, probably. But the crimson goop, the Ice Warrior on the submarine, the Spoonheads, Alec and Emma and the mansion, Dallas, Amy Johnson, all the rest—I remember all that and, when we meet again, I’m sure we’ll have many more adventures. And then someday I’ll become this guy and we’ll continue on, just with me being a little greyer and eyebrowsy.”

“Hey!” interrupted Eyebrows.

“Sorry. And there’s no way _he_ will ever forget you, either. Right?” Bow Tie gave Eyebrows a pointed look.

“Never.” 

Clara sniffed, “Well, I promise you, Doctor. I will never forget you, even if I live forever.” As she hugged Bow Tie close with one arm, Clara reached out with her other so that Eyebrows could take her hand, too, for just a moment. “It was amazing seeing you.”

“Better go inside, Clara,” Eyebrows said. “There are a few things the two of me need to talk about.”

Clara nodded and went into the TARDIS, leading Francis by the hand, which Francis did not complain about at all.

“Better watch that Francis, he’s a real ladies’ spider,” Bow Tie called out before the TARDIS door clicked shut.

“They do seem to have good chemistry,” Eyebrows agreed. “Ask your questions.”

Bow Tie frowned. “I’m supposed to be the last. How come you’re here? Did we somehow manage to bypass Trenzalore?”

“The full answer to that would be too complex and neither you nor I have the time. But I can tell you who is responsible.” He pointed a thumb back towards his TARDIS.

“No,” Bow Tie said. “Seriously?”

“You said earlier how Clara is a loyal friend. You don’t know the half of it.”

“Such as?”

“Look me in the eye. You tell me what you don’t see.”

Bow Tie did so. “I don’t see guilt. Not _that_ guilt, but how?”

Eyebrows pointed his thumb at the TARDIS again. 

“No wonder I’ll fall in love with her. Then again, I’m halfway there already, who am I kidding? But what about, you know …” Bow Tie tapped his wedding ring finger.

“…To be determined.” Eyebrows interrupted. A sad day to be faced on another day. Humans had a term for that: kicking the can down the road. 

“Promise me one thing. That you will take care of Clara. Above all else.”

“That’s the type of promise that could be dangerous to keep, for all our sakes.”

“Why?”

“Because I think … I think …” Eyebrows stopped himself. Even though he knew his earlier self would forget virtually everything about this encounter the moment the later TARDIS dematerialized, he had no right to reveal certain information to him. It had taken Missy, of all people, to make him realize that he and Clara were living Gallifrey’s most dangerous prophecy. By rights, he should just leave Clara on Earth. Let her finish her life in peace, in safety; humans have such short lives, she deserved to live hers in comfort. It was one reason he’d insisted on the Wednesday rendezvous. It would be so easy to just never come back, to leave Clara to her life. Move on. Many times, he’d considered it. Especially after the bad days, days when he nearly did not bring her home.

But Clara herself had once named the thing they shared. It became clear to him long ago. The dream crabs had reunited them. Clara had aligned with Missy, of all sentient beings, to bring them back together. And every time the Doctor tried to break things off, he found himself setting the coordinates to find her, to be with her again.

Clara had called it an addiction back on the _Orient Express_ , and she was so right; they were addicted to each other in a way that was a million times stronger than the largest dose of vraxoin, and infinitely more dangerous. Which was why they were the Hybrid. Which was why Eyebrows could not bring himself to say anything more to Bow Tie.

“…I think that’s a question best left unanswered. Hopefully forever,” Eyebrows finished, instead.

Bow Tie smiled. “On that cheery note, there’s probably a Russia-sized hole in the space-time continuum somewhere out in the galaxy caused by us hanging out like this, and you better get that eight- or nine-legged teenager home before Clara ends up space-married for real!” 

Bow Tie offered his hand and Eyebrows took it. Fun fact number one: Time Lords are immune to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, so long as it’s only different incarnations that make physical contact. Fun fact number two: it still feels creepy as hell to both parties and Bow Tie couldn’t help but shiver and make a face. “Get out of here,” he said.

With a smile, Eyebrows opened the TARDIS door and went inside. The trumpeting of dematerialization filled the air momentarily as it faded away.

Bow Tie looked up at the sky and said, “Good luck, Clara.” Then he blinked, shook himself, and looked around. What the heck was he doing in an alleyway? What city was this? Was he sleep-time-travelling again?

He stuck his tongue out. Didn’t taste like 2013. More like … ah, damn, he must have overshot. He checked his screwdriver that indicated the TARDIS was parked a few blocks away.

It had been two years, from his perspective, since he’d last seen Clara. He’d missed her terribly, but an uprising needed to be put down and the nice part about being a Time Lord is he had plenty of time. Clara wasn’t going anywhere.

Well, until now. He’d been meaning to take her to Hedgewick’s World for a while, ever since Clara had told him of how much she loved visiting Euro Disneyland as a child. No time like the present. He took his phone out and dialled Clara’s number.

“Yabba-dabba-do!” he called out as Clara, age twenty-four and still a nanny helping a single dad raise his two tween children, answered the call back in 2013. “How would you like to see the best amusement park in the galaxy?”

Bow Tie stopped in his tracks. 

“What _about_ Angie and Artie?”


	12. Martinis on the Beach

“So you remember it all this time, yeah?” 

Clara and the Doctor were sipping martinis in the shade of a palm tree on a beach in Southern California. This had been Clara’s request after they’d returned Francis home. Between the stress of the parent-teacher night, meeting a Doctor she never expected to see again, and the fact Francis could have been another in a long line of potentially Clara-eating threats (though, in the end, all he wanted was to mate with her, but she’d politely turned him down; heartbreak, after all, comes with growing up), Clara wanted a familiar destination where she could just relax. 

She and the Doctor had been here before, back when he wore the bow tie, so it felt appropriate. She noticed with amusement that the Doctor was able to actually sip a martini now; in his past life, he’d somehow managed to squirt it up his nose in a most impressive manner and just ended up sucking on the olive.

“You could say it’s all come back to me now, though it still feels like much of it happened to another person,” the Doctor said. He took a sip of his drink. “It’s one of the challenges of regeneration. I’m the same man I was when I was young and grey…er, centuries ago. That doesn’t change. But at the same time, all these experiences, like the ones Mr. Bow Tie had … even the ones he had with you … they feel like they happened to someone else, too.” He sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Clara sidled around the table and leaned against the Doctor, resting her head against his chest as he somewhat awkwardly (as he was still getting into the swing of physical contact again) put his left arm around her. Bow-Tie’s comments about how Eyebrows had felt unsure about himself around her evaporated. Okay, so he wasn’t smooth and easy, but he was still just right, and smooth and easy was boring anyway, right?

“I still dream about them, you know,” Clara said.

“Who?”

“The echoes. The other mes who rescued you throughout your lives. They were me, but they weren’t me. And when I think of what happened to them—it’s like someone else’s life, but it was mine, too. Remember Winnie?”

Winnie Clarence was an echo that had helped save both Clara and the Doctor only recently, in Antarctica. And she’d proven that not all the echoes had to give their lives to do it, which had impacted Clara just as much as the Doctor was when he learned he hadn’t actually destroyed Gallifrey.

The Doctor nodded.

“Doctor, I told you I had seen all eleven of you when I was in your timestream—Captain Grumpy not included—but I never saw _you_ or Winnie. It was like how you said you can’t remember meeting yourself ahead of time. How you forgot what happened at Coal Hill with Francis and me. You say I don’t understand, but I think, in a way, I do.”

“I never thought of it that way,” the Doctor said, unsure whether he had given offence.

“There are times … sometimes, not often ... when I wonder if I’m the real me, and not one of the echoes. Do you ever feel that way with all the different yous out there, roaming the universe?”

“Clara, there may be who knows how many of me skulking about, causing mayhem, just waiting to trip over that very last brick. But trust me, there will never really be another Clara Oswald.”

“And there’ll really never be another Mr. Eyebrows,” Clara said as they clinked their glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I borrow from all sorts of sources for my stories and you'll find some references to comic strips (Amy Johnson, Winnie Clarence) and novels (Dallas) among various episode references.
> 
> Mardaloopian is named after Marda Loop, a community in Calgary.
> 
> An earlier story of mine, The Coffee Shop, postulated that a version of Jenna Coleman, the actress, exists within the Whoniverse and is in fact a Clara echo. I revisit that here.
> 
> For those who might have been upset by something I have Bow Tie say a few chapters back - where he claims there's nothing between him and Clara - I do think Eleven was in love with Clara by the time his part of this story takes place (just prior to Nightmare in Silver from his perspective), but he doesn't really realize it fully yet, so that bit is not meant to downplay Eleven x Clara by any means.
> 
> EDIT: A few readers have noted that the TV series referenced is titled Emmerdale, not Emmerdale Farm. It used to be called Emmerdale Farm years ago and I had the parent use the older title intentionally. 
> 
> Fans of Canadian political humour of the 1960s might recognize two lines from a famous book of the day that I've borrowed for this (hints: they involve belly buttons and fingers). 
> 
> Oh and a couple people have probably wondered why the Doctor seems to know that he and Clara are the Hybrid before Ashildr tells him in Hell Bent. In my opinion he knew all along. And he just didn't care because it was Clara and they were addicted to each other.


End file.
